256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ing the adjustment, especially if complicated by irrational habits, the 

 body is naturally sensitive to the new diseases to which it is exposed. 

 Even should no specific disease be contracted, there are anasmic ten- 

 dencies and other degenerative changes. Experience teaches that 

 white men can not, with impunity, do hard manual labor under a 

 tropical sun, but that they may enjoy fairly good health as overseers, 

 or at indoor work, if they take reasonable precautions. 



Acclimatization, in the full sense of having white men and women 

 living for successive generations in the tropics, and reproducing their 

 kind without physical, mental and moral degeneration — i. e., coloniza- 

 tion in the true sense — is impossible. Tropical disease and death 

 rates, as has been abundantly shown, can, however, be greatly reduced 

 by strict attention to sanitary laws. And with increasing medical 

 knowledge of the nature and prevention of tropical diseases, as well 

 as by means of modern sanitary methods, a white resident in the tropics 

 will constantly become better able to withstand disease. For greater 

 comfort, for better health and for greater success, properly selected 

 hill stations will, however, always be essential to northerners who have 

 to live in the tropics, especially to white women and children. 



It has been well said that the white soldier in the tropics is " al- 

 ways in campaign; if not against the enemy, at least against the 

 climate." This sentence may be made to fit the case of the white civ- 

 ilian in the tropics by making it read : the white race in the tropics is 

 always in campaign against its enemy, the climate. 



Health in the Temperate Zones: General. — In the temperate zones 

 the organs of the body act more equally than in the warmer and 

 cooler latitudes. The winter cold is met by means of warm clothing, 

 heated houses and other means of protection. Unless too severe, or 

 too prolonged, the cold winter acts as a healthful stimulant upon body 

 and mind. In the tropics, the body is unused to adjusting itself to 

 temperature changes, because such changes are there slight, and is 

 readily affected by them. But the frequent, sudden and severe changes 

 of many parts of the temperate zone are usually borne without serious 

 discomfort or injury, if the body is in good health, and is accustomed 

 to adjusting itself readily to these changes. The habit of keeping 

 houses very warm in winter, and of having the air indoors very dry, 

 weakens the body's power to resist the cold outdoors, especially if the 

 air be damp, and aggravates affections of throat, lungs and nose. The 

 summers, although hot in the lower latitudes of these zones, and 

 marked by spells of warm weather even to their polar limits, are not 

 characterized by such steady, uniform moist heat as is typical of much 

 of the tropics. When the heat is extreme, and the relative humidity is 

 high, night and day, sunstroke is occasionally noted, but the invigora- 

 ting cool of autumn and winter are never far off, and may always be 

 trusted to bring relief. 



